Makes going back to the lower zones more worthwhile. Opened up ESO for me and made exploring other faction areas a lot more fun. I'd also like to see more off-line leveling in games, especially if I've been through the content eight or more times already. But till that becomes an option boosts are cool, especially as drops or when buying expansions.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I do not like level scaling....If I want easier I go to a zone that is easier, if I want harder I go to a harder zone...I want it more realistic not matching my level regardless of where I go
If it's done right (like in ESO) it's still easier in places and harder in others.
Still, I get that one-shotting things give people a hard-on.
Then it's still essentially a vertical progression, just flattened and muddied.
Yes, but you aren't forbidden to enter 90% of the world as a newbie because the same wolf that is level 1 in your newbie area will kick your ass in another area. A wolf is a wolf (and then you can have pack alpha wolves which are stronger of course).
Way more "realistic and immersive" to me.
I just don't see the pings being collected so easily when being chased across the whole world by level one wolves.
I do not like level scaling....If I want easier I go to a zone that is easier, if I want harder I go to a harder zone...I want it more realistic not matching my level regardless of where I go
If it's done right (like in ESO) it's still easier in places and harder in others.
Still, I get that one-shotting things give people a hard-on.
Then it's still essentially a vertical progression, just flattened and muddied.
Yes, but you aren't forbidden to enter 90% of the world as a newbie because the same wolf that is level 1 in your newbie area will kick your ass in another area. A wolf is a wolf (and then you can have pack alpha wolves which are stronger of course).
Way more "realistic and immersive" to me.
Let me give you an example.
In EQ clones, when you are level 10, you have level 10-14 wolves witch you will have to kill to progress in a few very specific areas. Outside of those areas, you die. And once you reach level 15, you'll move to a 15-19 area. Etc...
In ESO, you can go anywhere at any level. And you'll be able to handle a wolf. But that alpha wolf will prove quite a challenge to you as a newbie. Later, you'll get better, the alpha wolf will become cake, but you will always have harder mobs to tackle in the same area. You aren't blocked from exploring a specific area just because of your level, which is, to me, silly and anti-immersive.
I don't disagree that level-locked mobs as you mention are less immersive.
Someone else mentioned that one of the issues with vertical progression these days is how segregated the mobs are by power level. I feel, even in a traditional level system, it would be much better to assign wolves a certain power level, as you say, but not segregate mobs strictly by power level. Powerful trolls live in caves, but that doesn't mean a lowly wolf doesn't live outside the cave in the nearby forest.
One of the issues with the immersion breaking is also a lack of truly unique character models for each area. When you reuse the same character models with different colors/skins over and over and over and over and over (think the entirety of Azeroth mainland mobs), it's highly immersion breaking no matter the power system utilized.
I prefer traditional, but I like the content to reflect it. It makes sense that my seasoned warrior can easy kill those wolves he fought all that time ago. Some rag tag bandits, no threat, but experienced assassins make sense as being difficult. If a wolf can stand up to my max level character, it needs to be a BIG wolf... not just a reskin with a higher number in the nameplate.
Yeah but does it make sense my character can one shot a whole raid because its 4 expansions old?
I've never understood why all raids aren't updated to the new max level with every expansion. It can't be that hard to just increase the stat numbers on the mobs in each one and up the iLevel of the rewards.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
As long as we're going to have games with extremely granular (as in a whole shit pile of levels to the point where going up one is almost totally meaningless) level-based progression IMO anything designed to reduce that granularity is a good thing.
The problem is not that scaling undermines levels it's that it's a half-measure built on top of systems that have way too many levels.
It's just an attempt to minimize how levels spread out game populations way too much and trivialize large parts of the world. In that sense scaling is a very good thing.
Would there be better ways of doing it? Of course. Becoming more powerful horizontally through play time and experience would be a much better way to do it.
Take one of the BDO systems for example. Even though BDO is also mostly about levels and is very traditional that way, the knowledge system about types of mobs you gain by fighting them is a good step in the right direction. It is something that allows you to become more proficient when fighting a type of mob that is level independent. A bit too RNG based for my taste with the way you sometimes want to reset your knowledge for a chance at having the RNG gods give you a better knowledge outcome but the idea behind the system is a good start as a way of becoming more proficient without having it married to levels.
ESO as @Jean-Luc_Picard (and grats on gold, bud!) mentioned also does a pretty good job of having different types of mobs just be inherently tougher regardless of them all being the same level. You have trolls, mammoths, giants, etc. that hit harder and have a lot more HP than skeevers, wasps and bandits. That is also a good way to add variety and challenge independent of levels.
Scaling is not a problem. It's just a half-assed solution to the real problem which is having 100 or more levels.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
"Is Character/Zone Scaling for Level Progression the formula for MMORPG's moving
forward? Should it be?"
I certainly hope not. And hell NO.
The ONLY reason levels should even exist in an RPG* is to give a sense of power progression, and level scaling, especially forced scaling such as GW2 does, completely destroys that.
That said, there are a few exceptions that I think more MMOs should implement:
Scale to party member... basically an option to scale down to the lowest level player in the party (allowing friends to always have the option to play together).
Scale to world event... higher level players should have an option to scale down for a world event if they want to participate (but are otherwise locked out to keep things fair). (see: FFXIV FATEs)
Scale to instance... again, higher level players should have an option to scale down to the level of a private instance. Note: In some cases this should be forced, such as if joining an auto-matched party, or if the instance is 'public' (again, to keep things fair).
* If you want to have 'always balanced content' then make your progression system horizontal and save everyone the monotony of artificially levelling up (only to have it mean nothing because everything you encounter is always at the same relative level).
Nothing wrong with it at all. Would love to see it in all games as I makes leveling so much more diverse. On that note I would like to see more challenge involved in all games that implement this.
I do not like level scaling....If I want easier I go to a zone that is easier, if I want harder I go to a harder zone...I want it more realistic not matching my level regardless of where I go
If it's done right (like in ESO) it's still easier in places and harder in others.
Still, I get that one-shotting things give people a hard-on.
But to me ESO is kind of boring...While it scales to my level it is still very easy except for the bosses.
How about this: Instances scale. The world doesn't. As a primary crafter I LIKE being able to outlevel zones and grab components from those zones with no issue if I need them.
Also it causes problems if you specifically need say a level 11 drop(they say decomp into the level of shards you need to craft with while a level 41 drop would decomp into higher level shards that you aren't ready to craft with yet).
I like traditional but after playing ESO(since beta) with the One Tamriel update.. I really like that scaling system. Always gaining gear , stats , skills throughout.
Do you find Character/Zone Scaling to be fun or make the leveling process more boring?
Not just boring, pointless. I don't play those games, and if one adds it (looking at you, TOR), I just uninstall and never look back again.
Bear in mind, scaling is just a tool, its actual application makes or breaks the situation - true that most games use it the most stupid way, like your examples stated. There were several topics on scaling before, where it was discussed to the teeth... I'm with options. As you said
... scaling system for level progression is an interesting one because it does benefit new players to help them integrate into the game a lot easier. Friends would be more apt to play the MMORPG you're playing if they can transition into it easier....
Those are valid points. Where the scaled games are missing the mark is the idiotic 'forcing it on everyone' part. CoH (and in a bit more rigid implementation CO too) went with the smart, optional way. With that you can have the benefits of helping new players, and friends playing together, without killing off the sense of progression with stupid forced scaling.
(or, you can also have a level-less design, but that would be a totally different topic...)
The funny thing is that players say using the environment for questing is boring. So no to horizontal progression. They then turn around and play MMORPG where end game is like 1% of the map.
I loathe scaling. Ruins immersion for me. I want there to be dangerous places where only the experienced can thrive. Newbie places for the young and unexperienced etc.
You definitely have that in ESO, despite the level scaling, and it actually improves immersion to me (see previous post).
Interesting, I stay out of ESO for other reasons ( animation cancelling ) but that sounds good. A MMO with mobs like in the souls-series would be nice aswell on a larger scale. If you are not careful even the basic mobs can rip you apart etc.
Fix animation cancelling make more builds viable then I'll gladly give ESO another shot.
I loathe scaling. Ruins immersion for me. I want there to be dangerous places where only the experienced can thrive. Newbie places for the young and unexperienced etc.
You definitely have that in ESO, despite the level scaling, and it actually improves immersion to me (see previous post).
Interesting, I stay out of ESO for other reasons ( animation cancelling ) but that sounds good. A MMO with mobs like in the souls-series would be nice aswell on a larger scale. If you are not careful even the basic mobs can rip you apart etc.
Fix animation cancelling make more builds viable then I'll gladly give ESO another shot.
What is your style of play that doesn't offer enough builds? If you are trying to be a top pvper or a top raider than as with any game there are only a handful of builds that will push that style. Otherwise there are plenty of builds that work for everything else.
Absolutely. Level scaling makes for more realistic progression (just becoming a better fighter doesn't suddenly make you immune to a sword wielded by a rookie). It also increases the scope of viable endgame content by making the entire world viable endgame content.
Skill based scaling please. Anything else makes no sense and used to be just a compromise because hardware was shit compared to now or easier to paper&pen boardgames.
I am ok with character levels if it means that it is just used as benchmark for skill points to spend (like Skyrim for example).
Tab based combat was used because it is easier on a server and because boardgames already used this kind of combat, so it was easier to implement.
And player levels together with a world divided into level brackets was used because it is easier to balance. But this is the worst. It is immersion killing when you have a world that has 'serious problems' in a low level region where you can one shot foes because you earned some levels.
You one shot this evil dangerous terrorizing goblin boss in a low lvl area and but get killed by a puny boar in some higher lvl area. It is laughable , so bad. Although I would like to see a movie where this happens. (WoW movie could've used this lol)
Absolutely. Level scaling makes for more realistic progression (just becoming a better fighter doesn't suddenly make you immune to a sword wielded by a rookie). It also increases the scope of viable endgame content by making the entire world viable endgame content.
Why not? My veteran status has me better with my shield, my parries, my ripostes. A "rookie" would be lucky if they touched me.This is similar to saying, an Olympic sprinter is not much better than a Junior High School sprinter. Forget the years of training, the concentrated effort put in. They "should be" close to ability?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Absolutely. Level scaling makes for more realistic progression (just becoming a better fighter doesn't suddenly make you immune to a sword wielded by a rookie). It also increases the scope of viable endgame content by making the entire world viable endgame content.
Why not? My veteran status has me better with my shield, my parries, my ripostes. A "rookie" would be lucky if they touched me.This is similar to saying, an Olympic sprinter is not much better than a Junior High School sprinter. Forget the years of training, the concentrated effort put in. They "should be" close to ability?
Let me put it this way. If a squire stabs a knight in the back, that knight is going to die. His experience will not make him immune to damage. It will just make him better able to prevent that damage
Absolutely. Level scaling makes for more realistic progression (just becoming a better fighter doesn't suddenly make you immune to a sword wielded by a rookie). It also increases the scope of viable endgame content by making the entire world viable endgame content.
Why not? My veteran status has me better with my shield, my parries, my ripostes. A "rookie" would be lucky if they touched me.This is similar to saying, an Olympic sprinter is not much better than a Junior High School sprinter. Forget the years of training, the concentrated effort put in. They "should be" close to ability?
Let me put it this way. If a squire stabs a knight in the back, that knight is going to die. His experience will not make him immune to damage. It will just make him better able to prevent that damage
But wouldn't it be great if it could?
"You attempt to stab the sleeping Sir Knight in the back... You fumble the attack and must wait to recover!"
Inability to play with your level 1 friend is almost a non issue blown our of proportion. The very few times I have heard someone say that their friend disn't want to join because they could not join a high level, it usually had other causes too. If I really wanted to introduce a friend to a game, it was never a problem for me, to make an alt to play with.. If this friend actually wanted to play after that "trial", they would make the effort to catch up.
Scaling is ruining the sense of immersion and making everything bland and pointless.. Progression IS what a mmoRPG evolve around, and scaling destroys progression. Same goes for so called horizontal progression, which is not really progression.
Traditional leveling is antiquated and out-dated. We liked it because it was all we had in 1999 and reflected the rigid structure of Dungeons and Dragons. What has been seen time and time again is when using this method of leveling you effectively create a "tunnel" of content to max level that has no value after the first expansion. It becomes a waste of resources as you have all these low level zones that are empty and not used.
Scaling itself isn't the answer, but it is a major part of it. In order to have a "living" world you need to be able to go back to zones you started in and have something of value there to do. That could be dynamic/new content, crafting materials, location for housing etc.
Levels aren't pointless, but at the same time you have to stop looking at levels as a way of progression. Its simply an indicator of time/experience spent in the game. Being level 100 shouldn't make you stronger simply because you did 100 levels. You should be strong because you use your skills in an experienced to overcome the content.
I also shouldn't be restricted from playing with someone because they are a different level. If the point of MMORPGs is socialized game play then anything that prevents that is bad.
LIke it or not, I think ESO has one of the best implementations of level scaling that at least allow players to 1) go where ever they want when they want 2) Play with anybody at any level 3) Do any content at any time. Of course there are downsides (all systems have them) and one for me is changing how crafting is handled. As you level crafting you no longer "find" the low level materials anymore making it difficult to craft low level gear for alts, others, etc. Mats should somehow just appear for all levels and let me find them.
I think scaling or some aspect of it IS the future of MMORPGs because it extends the life of the game and consistently makes all parts of the world useable.
Inability to play with your level 1 friend is almost a non issue blown our of proportion. The very few times I have heard someone say that their friend disn't want to join because they could not join a high level, it usually had other causes too. If I really wanted to introduce a friend to a game, it was never a problem for me, to make an alt to play with.. If this friend actually wanted to play after that "trial", they would make the effort to catch up.
Scaling is ruining the sense of immersion and making everything bland and pointless.. Progression IS what a mmoRPG evolve around, and scaling destroys progression. Same goes for so called horizontal progression, which is not really progression.
How does scaling ruin immersion anymore than me having to one shotting a demon... but taking 1 minute to kill a the local wolf that is in a higher level area. Most times the toughness(higher level of creatures) makes no sense. At least in scaling or horizontal you assign difficulty to creatures and NPCs that make sense.
Inability to play with your level 1 friend is almost a non issue blown our of proportion. The very few times I have heard someone say that their friend disn't want to join because they could not join a high level, it usually had other causes too. If I really wanted to introduce a friend to a game, it was never a problem for me, to make an alt to play with.. If this friend actually wanted to play after that "trial", they would make the effort to catch up.
Scaling is ruining the sense of immersion and making everything bland and pointless.. Progression IS what a mmoRPG evolve around, and scaling destroys progression. Same goes for so called horizontal progression, which is not really progression.
How does scaling ruin immersion anymore than me having to one shotting a demon... but taking 1 minute to kill a the local wolf that is in a higher level area. Most times the toughness(higher level of creatures) makes no sense. At least in scaling or horizontal you assign difficulty to creatures and NPCs that make sense.
While true, nothing is stopping devs from taking aore logical approach to populating mobs based on power level, either with traditional level systems or with scaling
Inability to play with your level 1 friend is almost a non issue blown our of proportion. The very few times I have heard someone say that their friend disn't want to join because they could not join a high level, it usually had other causes too. If I really wanted to introduce a friend to a game, it was never a problem for me, to make an alt to play with.. If this friend actually wanted to play after that "trial", they would make the effort to catch up.
Scaling is ruining the sense of immersion and making everything bland and pointless.. Progression IS what a mmoRPG evolve around, and scaling destroys progression. Same goes for so called horizontal progression, which is not really progression.
How does scaling ruin immersion anymore than me having to one shotting a demon... but taking 1 minute to kill a the local wolf that is in a higher level area. Most times the toughness(higher level of creatures) makes no sense. At least in scaling or horizontal you assign difficulty to creatures and NPCs that make sense.
While true, nothing is stopping devs from taking aore logical approach to populating mobs based on power level, either with traditional level systems or with scaling
Even then, mob distribution would inevitably break immersion. Why are the most powerful enemies arbitrarily at one location as opposed to another?
This is especially true of any RPG with a war story. Why is the enemy only sending his weakest recruits to your location at the start of the game, especially if said location is an important capital city?
Inability to play with your level 1 friend is almost a non issue blown our of proportion. The very few times I have heard someone say that their friend disn't want to join because they could not join a high level, it usually had other causes too. If I really wanted to introduce a friend to a game, it was never a problem for me, to make an alt to play with.. If this friend actually wanted to play after that "trial", they would make the effort to catch up.
Scaling is ruining the sense of immersion and making everything bland and pointless.. Progression IS what a mmoRPG evolve around, and scaling destroys progression. Same goes for so called horizontal progression, which is not really progression.
How does scaling ruin immersion anymore than me having to one shotting a demon... but taking 1 minute to kill a the local wolf that is in a higher level area. Most times the toughness(higher level of creatures) makes no sense. At least in scaling or horizontal you assign difficulty to creatures and NPCs that make sense.
While true, nothing is stopping devs from taking aore logical approach to populating mobs based on power level, either with traditional level systems or with scaling
Even then, mob distribution would inevitably break immersion. Why are the most powerful enemies arbitrarily at one location as opposed to another?
This is especially true of any RPG with a war story. Why is the enemy only sending his weakest recruits to your location at the start of the game, especially if said location is an important capital city?
Again, there's no need to segregate the mobs so concretely. A wolf is a wolf, level range 10-14, but nearby there may be a cave of trolls, inherently stronger and, as such, levels 25-29. I believe the two issues are independent of one another and can be addressed as such.
Even with level scaling, it makes little sense for one area to contain all the more difficult mobs, another to contain all the weakest.
Comments
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Someone else mentioned that one of the issues with vertical progression these days is how segregated the mobs are by power level. I feel, even in a traditional level system, it would be much better to assign wolves a certain power level, as you say, but not segregate mobs strictly by power level. Powerful trolls live in caves, but that doesn't mean a lowly wolf doesn't live outside the cave in the nearby forest.
One of the issues with the immersion breaking is also a lack of truly unique character models for each area. When you reuse the same character models with different colors/skins over and over and over and over and over (think the entirety of Azeroth mainland mobs), it's highly immersion breaking no matter the power system utilized.
The problem is not that scaling undermines levels it's that it's a half-measure built on top of systems that have way too many levels.
It's just an attempt to minimize how levels spread out game populations way too much and trivialize large parts of the world. In that sense scaling is a very good thing.
Would there be better ways of doing it? Of course. Becoming more powerful horizontally through play time and experience would be a much better way to do it.
Take one of the BDO systems for example. Even though BDO is also mostly about levels and is very traditional that way, the knowledge system about types of mobs you gain by fighting them is a good step in the right direction. It is something that allows you to become more proficient when fighting a type of mob that is level independent. A bit too RNG based for my taste with the way you sometimes want to reset your knowledge for a chance at having the RNG gods give you a better knowledge outcome but the idea behind the system is a good start as a way of becoming more proficient without having it married to levels.
ESO as @Jean-Luc_Picard (and grats on gold, bud!) mentioned also does a pretty good job of having different types of mobs just be inherently tougher regardless of them all being the same level. You have trolls, mammoths, giants, etc. that hit harder and have a lot more HP than skeevers, wasps and bandits. That is also a good way to add variety and challenge independent of levels.
Scaling is not a problem. It's just a half-assed solution to the real problem which is having 100 or more levels.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
"Is Character/Zone Scaling for Level Progression the formula for MMORPG's moving forward? Should it be?"
I certainly hope not. And hell NO.
The ONLY reason levels should even exist in an RPG* is to give a sense of power progression, and level scaling, especially forced scaling such as GW2 does, completely destroys that.
That said, there are a few exceptions that I think more MMOs should implement:
* If you want to have 'always balanced content' then make your progression system horizontal and save everyone the monotony of artificially levelling up (only to have it mean nothing because everything you encounter is always at the same relative level).
On that note I would like to see more challenge involved in all games that implement this.
Also it causes problems if you specifically need say a level 11 drop(they say decomp into the level of shards you need to craft with while a level 41 drop would decomp into higher level shards that you aren't ready to craft with yet).
Yep, it nullifies it.
Not just boring, pointless. I don't play those games, and if one adds it (looking at you, TOR), I just uninstall and never look back again.
Bear in mind, scaling is just a tool, its actual application makes or breaks the situation - true that most games use it the most stupid way, like your examples stated. There were several topics on scaling before, where it was discussed to the teeth... I'm with options. As you said
Those are valid points. Where the scaled games are missing the mark is the idiotic 'forcing it on everyone' part.
CoH (and in a bit more rigid implementation CO too) went with the smart, optional way. With that you can have the benefits of helping new players, and friends playing together, without killing off the sense of progression with stupid forced scaling.
(or, you can also have a level-less design, but that would be a totally different topic...)
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
"You attempt to stab the sleeping Sir Knight in the back... You fumble the attack and must wait to recover!"
Scaling is ruining the sense of immersion and making everything bland and pointless.. Progression IS what a mmoRPG evolve around, and scaling destroys progression. Same goes for so called horizontal progression, which is not really progression.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
Scaling itself isn't the answer, but it is a major part of it. In order to have a "living" world you need to be able to go back to zones you started in and have something of value there to do. That could be dynamic/new content, crafting materials, location for housing etc.
Levels aren't pointless, but at the same time you have to stop looking at levels as a way of progression. Its simply an indicator of time/experience spent in the game. Being level 100 shouldn't make you stronger simply because you did 100 levels. You should be strong because you use your skills in an experienced to overcome the content.
I also shouldn't be restricted from playing with someone because they are a different level. If the point of MMORPGs is socialized game play then anything that prevents that is bad.
LIke it or not, I think ESO has one of the best implementations of level scaling that at least allow players to 1) go where ever they want when they want 2) Play with anybody at any level 3) Do any content at any time. Of course there are downsides (all systems have them) and one for me is changing how crafting is handled. As you level crafting you no longer "find" the low level materials anymore making it difficult to craft low level gear for alts, others, etc. Mats should somehow just appear for all levels and let me find them.
I think scaling or some aspect of it IS the future of MMORPGs because it extends the life of the game and consistently makes all parts of the world useable.
This is especially true of any RPG with a war story. Why is the enemy only sending his weakest recruits to your location at the start of the game, especially if said location is an important capital city?
Even with level scaling, it makes little sense for one area to contain all the more difficult mobs, another to contain all the weakest.